A Valquíria ossia O Crepúsculo dos Deuses

(James Morris, como Wotan, e Irene Theorin, como Brünnhilde - Met, Abril 2009)

Não há duas sem três!

Esta A Valquíria anuncia o ocaso de Morris – Wotan magnífico, há vinte anos -, Meier – Sieglinde de sonho, nos idos anos 1990 – e da datadíssima mise-en-scène de Otto Schenk. Doravante, outra encenação verá a luz do dia, na temporada 2009 / 2010.

«James Morris, a veteran bass with two decades’ experience as Wotan, no longer sings with the tonal control and force he once brought to the part. Especially in the softer passages of Act III his sound was parched.

Yet Mr. Morris’s command of character was absolute, his Wotan an imperious, prideful and ultimately tragic figure. His ability to cut through the orchestra at climactic moments remained intact; elsewhere, you not only overlooked flaws but began to accept them as a part of Mr. Morris’s imposing conception.

Similarly, other singers might have brought more sheer volume to the role of Brünnhilde than the Swedish soprano Irene Theorin did. Making her American debut on relatively short notice as a replacement for Christine Brewer, said to be recovering from an injury, Ms. Theorin sounded somewhat unsettled in her initial appearance during Act II: her sound slightly undersized, her high notes on pitch, but acidic.

Physically, though, Ms. Theorin played the part of a teenage fighter with a limber vitality and a boundless energy not seen in a Met Brünnhilde since Olga Sergeeva took the role in 2004. Ms. Theorin sang with increasing presence and control as the night went on, promising much for the matinee performance on Saturday. Here the uncommon stillness and vulnerability of her singing in the third act made the strongest impression.

As the doomed sibling lovers Siegmund and Sieglinde, Johan Botha and Waltraud Meier made strikingly disparate impressions. Mr. Botha sang with copious power and tonal splendor but lacked physical grace. Ms. Meier compensated for an initially lean, edgy sound with her dramatic intensity and overwhelming passion; her singing, too, steadily grew more compelling. John Tomlinson was a formidable Hunding; Yvonne Naef, an imperious, commanding Fricka.

James Levine summoned tempestuous playing from the orchestra in a fiery, driven performance. At times his gusty pace may have been too much for musicians tasked with a complete “Ring” cycle late in the season: the brass players were bedeviled by problems with pitch and execution.

For the most part, spirited stage action sufficiently compensated for technical shortcomings during this initial farewell to one of the Met’s most popular productions, scheduled to be retired after this season. Not surprisingly, the director, Otto Schenk, architect of this craggy tableau and animator of its inhabitants, received one of the loudest, longest ovations.»